Community College Research Center Reports on Online Remedial Courses

Community College Research Center Reports on Online Remedial Courses

Shanna Jaggars, senior research associate at CCRC, has found that students who take online remedial classes are less likely to succeed in college-level courses.'

LINK TO HEADLINE:  Community Colleges Offer Online Courses to Address Specific Needs of Remedial Students

Just 31 percent of community college students complete remedial math “gateway” courses before they move on to college level math, according to a recent study. To help combat this cycle, some community colleges are turning to newly developed online programs that emphasize repetition, practice and mastery of concepts.

For example, the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education in Marina, Calif., an online educational content provider, will make available to community colleges a free series of developmental math courses in April. The Gates Foundation-funded series, “Developmental Math — Open Program,” includes courses ranging from arithmetic to intermediate algebra, geometry and statistics

 “Math My Way,” a program that combines arithmetic and pre-algebra and offers a blended model of instruction. In addition to traditional, face-to-face classes, students can either work on homework from a textbook or via online courses. Between 50 and 60 percent of “Math My Way” students pass the course, a rate that is comparable to traditional courses. However, an analysis also indicates that students in the “Math My Way” program are two to three times more likely to pass subsequent math courses.

Developmental students, for example, often lack the time management skills and self-directed learning ability that many online courses require.